God’s Celestial Ambassador: The Life and Times of Dr. Frank E. Stranges - Part VI
By Raymond A. Keller, PhD, a.k.a. “Cosmic Ray,” the author of the international awards-winning Venus Rising Series, published by Headline Books and available on Amazon.com, while supplies last.
Venus Rising: A Concise History of the Second Planet
Final Countdown: Rockets to Venus
Cosmic Ray's Excellent Venus Adventure
Lady Columba Venus Revelations
Venus shines brightly in the star fields of outer space. Original artwork from Flying Saucers magazine, Amherst, Wisconsin, in Dr. Keller’s Otto Binder files.
The Outer Space Connection
In considering the many high quality UFO reports that he had compiled in his Flying Saucerama, Dr. Frank E. Stranges began to consider the possibility of an outer space connection to the phenomenon. Initially, he thought it would be difficult, at least for Americans in the late 1950s, to bring themselves to the realization that flying saucers may well be our first introduction to beings from another planet. We have to remember that the opinions expressed by the powers-that-be in government and media in 1959 were trending toward a severe criticism of ufologists in general, and the contactees, specifically. Dr. Stranges made a comparison of this situation to a state of war, “where clouds of smoke are often laid in order to hide certain activities such as troop movements, battle maneuvers, etc. In the case of the flying saucer, the United States Air Force has really overdone itself in attempting to disprove that which actually exists.”
According to Lieutenant Colonel John O’Mara, the Deputy Commander of Intelligence for the United States Air Force, throughout the last half of the decade of the 1950s, his military branch’s UFO investigative organization, Project Blue Book, was receiving over 700 flying saucer reports per week. In light of this avalanche of UFO reports, Dr. Stranges naturally wondered how long the Air Force could continue with the contradiction of denying the existence of flying saucers. Even General Douglas MacArthur had voiced sober and thought-provoking words concerning the UFO phenomenon. On 7 October 1955, the mayor of Naples, Italy, Achille Lauro, was visiting the United States and staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, where he had been meeting with General MacArthur earlier that day. In the afternoon, when questioned by a reporter from the New York Times about anything the prestigious Army officer may have told him about the nature of any future conflict, the Italian mayor blurted out that, “He thinks that another war will be double suicide; and that there is enough sense on both sides of the Iron Curtain to avoid it. He also believes that because of the developments of science, all countries on Earth will have to unite to survive and to make a common front against attack by people from other planets.” In addition, the mayor declared that, “In the general’s opinion, the politics of the future will be cosmic, or interplanetary.”
Regarding these alleged statements by the general, Dr. Stranges remarked, “This, in my humble opinion, is certainly a statement to read and read again, carefully considering the fact that a man such as General MacArthur would not make wild statements, thus jeopardizing his standing as a soldier respected both for his military prestige and his civilian leadership.” The doctor and UFO researcher then continued to elaborate on several encounters with anomalous objects by United States military pilots. The speed and maneuverability of the flying saucers in these cases certainly exceeded, technologically, anything that we or the Soviets had on the drawing board at that time. The only logical conclusion was that these UFOs were real, physical objects arriving at Earth from another world.
From Keller Venus Files: Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC, Ret. (1897-1988), was America’s foremost authority on UFOs during the latter half of the 1950s. Dr. Frank E. Stranges worked closely with Keyhoe during this period.
Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC, Retired
The impressiveness of the UFO reports made by the military pilots convinced Dr. Frank E. Stranges that flying saucers are not all connected to Earth-based phenomena or manufactured devices from either the United States or the competing superpower of the Soviet Union. The doctor’s assessment of the UFO situation paralleled that of Donald E. Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major and pilot, as well as the author of the then bestselling book, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1955). Keyhoe, who in 1959 was directing the largest civilian UFO research group, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), headquartered in Washington, D.C., was claiming that there was no doubt about the truth of the existence of flying saucers. Keyhoe was critical of the United States Air Force and asserted that many startling reports of UFOs were being held from the public, largely because the military brass in the highest echelons of the Pentagon feared the spread of nationwide hysteria that would surely follow the release of such information.
Keyhoe did recognize that the UFO reports made by most United States Air Force pilots maintained a worldwide reputation for an unbiased objectivity. In his book, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, he reports the following aerial encounters by such seasoned military aviators:
“A B-29 clocked three formations of flying objects at 5,240 m.p.h., over the Gulf of Mexico. Then a giant machine showed up on the B-29’s radar scopes. The three mysterious formations converged toward the big object and then disappeared into it. Then it raced of at 9,000 m.p.h. At Kinross, Michigan, an Air Force F-89 took off from the base to chase a UFO that had been picked up by ground radar. On their radar screens, the radar men could see the fighter’s blip merge with the unidentified blip. Then both disappeared and the F-89 never returned. To this day, no trace of that F-89 or its pilot has been found.”
From numerous reports such as those cited above, Keyhoe came to the conclusion that flying saucers are neither American nor Soviet secret weapons. After all, back in 1955 when Keyhoe’s book was published, there was no known metal that could withstand the heat created at such speeds within our atmosphere. Therefore, the retired Marine Corps pilot felt that perhaps the intelligences behind the flying saucers may be using the anti-gravity field principle as it was reported in 1955 by Ansel Talbert, the military and aviation editor of the New York Herald Tribune, and from which I compiled an extensive series of articles for Lon Strickler’s Phantoms and Monsters blogsite in 2020 and 2021. Basically, the utilization of an anti-gravity drive system as outlined by Talbert encompasses an understanding that electricity and magnetism are related to gravity in definite ways, but as yet not known, unfortunately. Or should I say, “fortunately,” as far as any extraterrestrials are concerned. Who knows what kind of havoc humans might wreak in the cosmos with anti-gravity ships facilitating the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other planets in our own solar system and beyond!
Keyhoe and other UFO investigators maintained that, “The finger of fact points in only one direction: outer space.” Based on Keyhoe’s extensive research into the reality of the flying saucers as interplanetary spaceships, Dr. Stranges signed up as one of the early members of NICAP and became a close associate of the retired Marine Corps major and the world’s then leading authority on the subject of UFOs and the conspiracy of the United States government to hide the truth about these mysterious objects.
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